


A Cost-Benefit Analysis (Whumptober 2020 Day 3)

by Jadelyn



Series: Whumptober 2020 [3]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ambiguous/Open Ending, First Kiss, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Whump, Gun Violence, Human Trafficking, Love Confessions, M/M, Whumptober 2020, no beta we die like a mob boss's meat shields
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:00:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26985577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadelyn/pseuds/Jadelyn
Summary: Jaskier is undercover within Emhyr var Emreis' criminal organization, working with his partner Geralt on finding the source of and stopping a human trafficking operation Emhyr's organization manages.  They deviate from the mission to help Emhyr's wife and daughter escape his control, and they seem to have gotten away with it, until the day Geralt is dragged in, bloody and struggling, for Emhyr to interrogate at gunpoint about the whereabouts of his missing wife and daughter.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: Whumptober 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953790
Comments: 7
Kudos: 43





	A Cost-Benefit Analysis (Whumptober 2020 Day 3)

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: No 3. MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY  
> Manhandled | Forced to their Knees | Held at Gunpoint
> 
> (Do I get bonus points for incorporating all three?)

“You got them out okay?”

“Of course. Do you doubt my skills?”

“No, but I got to like Pavetta and her daughter. She trusted me enough to ask for my help in letting her and Ciri escape. I just want to know they’re safe, Geralt.”

“They are, I promise you. Emhyr and his hounds will never find them.”

“Good. That’s all I wanted to know."

"That's fine, just…don't forget why we're here, right? Good job, you've earned a Boy Scout award for your good deed, but there are a lot more than a single mother and child at stake here. We find their pipeline, we can go to the source and free dozens of Pavettas and Ciris."

"I know. I haven't forgotten. There's a meeting in a couple weeks with someone who might be the middleman. Emhyr is really starting to trust me - that's why I had the access necessary to help Pavetta - so I should be able to get myself brought along. I'll pass along what I find out."

"Good. If you can let me know when and where, I'll try to stay nearby and see if I can learn anything else that you might not be privy to."

"Uh-huh. You keep telling yourself that's what you're there for. Not to play the silent protector over me or anything. You gonna crouch on a conveniently dramatic rooftop nearby, too?"

"Shut up, Jaskier."

“Ooh, I could get you a cape so that it can billow around you and add the proper ambiance.”

“Shut. Up.”

"You know I'm no good at that. That's why we send me in to talk to people and let you lurk around and brood in the shadows. Playing to our strengths."

"Jaskier…"

"All right, all right. Look, I gotta head back, I still have to stop off at the warehouse to pick up the stuff I said I was going to get, or they’ll wonder where I’ve been.”

“All right. Stay safe.”

“You too. Next week?”

“I’ll call you.”

* * *

When Geralt missed their next meetup, Jaskier tried not to worry too much. He waited as long as he reasonably could before heading back, trying to tell himself that shit happens sometimes, he might’ve picked up a tail and not wanted to lead them to Jaskier or their meeting place, or any number of other reasons Geralt might have had for missing their check-in without a word that weren’t “he’s lying dead in a ditch somewhere”.

Those excuses went up in flames approximately an hour later, when the door to Emhyr's study slammed open to admit a half dozen figures dragging a bound man with a black bag over his head, struggling and spitting muffled curses despite being outnumbered six to one.

Emhyr paused in his conversation with Jaskier and a handful of his lieutenants to watch with mild interest as the little procession entered. Two of the guards forced the prisoner to his knees, one of them reaching to pull the bag off and expose the prisoner's face.

Jaskier's heart had already plummeted through the floor before the guard's fingers so much as touched the material. He'd spent a decade and a half sharing misadventures, rooms, baths, campsites, cars, and beds with the man. They'd seen each other in every possible state of dress and undress. Jaskier could map the scars he knew were beneath the tight black t-shirt and jeans from memory. Could recite the stories of them, too. He'd been there for most of them.

He didn't need to see Geralt's face to recognize him.

But Jaskier was a professional. He schooled his face to neutrality with a hint of bemusement, mirroring Emhyr's reaction. He didn't react when the bag was pulled away to reveal Geralt's face, snarling and furious.

Geralt, likewise, was a professional. His eyes scanned over the room, placing bodies and assessing threats the way Jaskier had seen him do hundreds of times, and didn't so much as flicker when his gaze raked over Jaskier sitting among Emhyr's entourage.

Underneath his careful mask, however, Jaskier was sick with suppressed rage. A vertical slice bisected Geralt's left eye from his hairline down to his cheek and blood coated that side of his face, though by some miracle the eye itself looked undamaged. His silver-white hair was red with blood as well, though Jaskier couldn't see the wound it had come from. Geralt was still conscious and fighting, though, so hopefully it wasn't too bad.

Jaskier squinted a little at Geralt's torso, trying to make out whether he had other injuries or not, but the dark fabric made it nearly impossible to tell. How many times had Jaskier teased Geralt about wearing all black? And each time he'd dryly replied that it hid the blood loss better. It had become a running joke between them.

Suddenly the joke wasn't so funny anymore.

Another of the guards stepped up behind Geralt with pistol drawn. He cocked it ostentatiously - purely for the sound, Jaskier noted as he watched an unfired round being ejected from the chamber into the man’s hand as the slide was pulled back. Stupid, showy bastard, wasting a round on pretending to be the bad guy in a shitty action movie - and then pressed the muzzle into the back of Geralt’s head.

Geralt fell still, recognizing the threat for what it was. The excess guards peeled off and left, now that their package had been delivered and appropriately subdued, closing the door behind them.

Leaving Jaskier and Geralt alone with Emhyr, four of his lieutenants, and three armed guards, with Geralt on his knees with a gun to his head and Jaskier armed only with a small hidden knife in its forearm sheath.

The odds, Jaskier had to admit, were...not great.

“Very dramatic,” Emhyr said dryly. “I’m assuming you have a reason for interrupting my meeting in such a fashion?”

“Yes, boss,” one of the guards said. “We caught a lucky break and found some video footage from a new shopfront on the edge of the warehouse district. His team -” he lightly kicked Geralt’s thigh, “- had deleted footage from all the other cameras in the area, but I’m guessing they hadn’t factored this new place into their plans yet.”

“Good for you,” Emhyr said. “And this was important enough to bring directly to me because…?”

The guard grinned. “Because the footage showed this bastard with Pavetta and Cirilla the night they vanished.”

Emhyr went very, very still. “Did it, now?” he asked quietly.

_Oh, fuck._

Emhyr stood, slowly. Paced over to stand directly in front of Geralt. Jaskier could only see Emhyr’s back from where he was, but he could feel the rage searing the air around him.

“What did the footage show, exactly?” Emhyr asked the guard.

“Him walking them to a car - pickup truck - helping them in, then driving away with them. Not much, but it’s definitely them and definitely him.”

Emhyr nodded.

The silence in the room shattered a moment later with the crack of Emhyr’s hand against Geralt’s face. Geralt’s head snapped to the side for a moment, then he looked back up at Emhyr with absolutely no change to his expression, as if it had never happened.

“Where are they?” Emhyr demanded. Geralt, of course, didn’t answer.

Emhyr struck him again. “Where did you take them?”

“Who are you working for?”

“How did you sneak them out?”

Geralt answered none of it, remaining preternaturally stoic despite the blood beginning to drip from his nose and split lip. At last Jaskier couldn’t stand it any longer. He stood and came forward to stand beside Emhyr.

“I don’t think we’re going to be able to get him to break like this, sir,” Jaskier said, keeping his voice tentative and nonthreatening. “But at least we know where they were last seen, which is more than we knew this morning. So I’d suggest we focus our efforts elsewhere for the moment - put him on ice for a bit, we can come back and work this angle more later, and in the meantime focus the search based on what we’ve learned tonight.” Emhyr hummed consideringly, but didn’t reply. “Could he have been working with the Feds? Gotten them into witsec?”

Emhyr shook his head. “My contacts would have told me if they’d shown up in that system. We’d have had them home by now if it were that simple.”

Filing that alarming nugget of information about Emhyr’s contacts away for future consideration, Jaskier nodded. “All right, then. Why don’t I take a team down to where the camera caught them? Now that we know exactly where they were, with whom, what vehicle they left in, and when, we might be able to find someone who saw something. It’s all about asking the right questions, you know?”

It would only buy Geralt a temporary reprieve, but it would get the fucking gun away from his fucking head at least, and given a little time Jaskier should be able to plan some kind of daring escape. The mission would be shot, but better that than his partner. Geralt might scold him for sentimentality, but if Jaskier had to choose between a dozen Pavettas and a dozen Ciris on the one hand, and Geralt’s life on the other, he’d protect his partner every time.

“Perhaps you’re right, Julian,” Emhyr said, stepping back. “At least partly.”

“Partly?” Jaskier asked, confused. “How so?”

“We’re not going to get anything useful out of him right now, so a targeted physical search is the next step."

_Well, that's good._

"However, I lack your faith in our ability to break this bastard at all, whether now or later. And in that case, there's no real reason to waste resources imprisoning him."

_That's significantly less good._

Time stretched, slowed, warped. Jaskier saw the careless wave of Emhyr's hand as he turned away, heard him give the kill order, saw the guard's hand tighten on the gun in preparation for pulling the trigger. He was dimly aware of leaping forward, the guard bringing the gun up in an automatic defensive reflex, and then he was kneeling atop the bastard's corpse with his holdout knife buried hilt-deep in the man's throat as pandemonium erupted behind him.

Jaskier yanked the knife out, whirled, and saw where Geralt had thrown his weight into the legs of one of the other guards, managing to angle it to send him stumbling into Emhyr to take both of them down in a temporary tangle of limbs. He scrambled close enough to slash through the zip-ties around Geralt's wrists, wincing slightly as he felt the give of flesh and realized he'd nicked him a bit - but at the moment, speed was more important than precision - and slapped the bloody hilt of the knife into his hand.

The third guard had his gun out by the time Jaskier turned back toward him, and the sound was like a punch to the eardrums when it went off while Jaskier was lunging to snatch up the gun dropped by the guard he killed. Jaskier didn't feel anything, though, so hopefully that meant the shot had missed. (The alternative was that he hadn't been aiming at Jaskier, but Jaskier didn't want to consider that.)

Geralt was already working his way methodically through Emhyr's retinue, deadly grace like a dance cutting them down one after another, and by the time Jaskier rose with his stolen gun in hand the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

"Did you kill Emhyr, or did I?" Jaskier asked conversationally in the silence that fell afterward, nudging the fallen crime lord's corpse with the toe of his shoe.

"No idea," Geralt answered shortly. His voice was tight, and Jaskier looked over at him.

"Next question, how much of that blood is yours?" Before Geralt could reply, Jaskier added, "And if you give me the same answer I will beat you with your own shoes."

Geralt sighed. "I'll be fine."

"That's not an answer." Jaskier set the gun down on the desk, closed the distance between them and carefully traced the line of the cut over Geralt's eye.

"Head wounds bleed a lot, Jask. You know that. It's not as bad as it looks."

"Still, though."

Abruptly Geralt turned away, shoulders tense. "Why did you do that, Jaskier?"

"Are you -" Jaskier had to pause, mouth agape, and breathe for a moment before he could speak. Infuriating man! "Why did I intervene to save your fucking life, you mean? Is that really what you're asking?"

"You turned the situation from a straightforward execution into a fight, one in which we _both_ could've gotten killed. _You_ could've gotten killed. Not to mention we've just murdered Emhyr var Emreis and several of his top lieutenants, and no matter how justified that was the law still doesn't exactly look kindly on it. Oh and let's not forget the reason we were here in the first place, to take down their trafficking operation, which definitely isn't going to happen now!"

Fury lent Jaskier strength, and he reached out and hauled Geralt back around hard enough to make the bigger man stumble. "You had better not be fucking suggesting that any of that shit would have been worth my standing back and watching you die!"

"One life versus _at least_ two, if this fight had gone south, and potentially dozens because of the failure of our mission? It's a simple cost-benefit analysis, Jaskier. You don't risk yourself and the entire job just to save my useless hide, dammit."

"Useless?" Jaskier sputtered. _"Cost-benefit?"_ He slammed his palms against Geralt's unfairly broad chest and shoved him back, sending him crashing into the wall behind him, following after him and crowding into Geralt's personal space. "Fuck you, Geralt. You're not expendable, no matter how hard you want to pretend you are, you fucking asshole."

"Neither are you!" Geralt roared. His chest heaved with some unnamed emotion beneath Jaskier's hands, and he seized Jaskier's wrists in a painful grip. Hazel eyes burned as he snarled, "If that hadn't worked, all it would've accomplished was getting you killed with me. _Nothing_ is worth that risk."

Jaskier's breath caught and he choked back tears borne of fury and the repressed terror of seeing Geralt like that, half a heartbeat from death. "You think I would've lasted long after that anyway, left alone with the memory of standing aside and letting you be killed right in front of me?" He shook his head. "I'd have drank myself to death, or gone on an ill-planned revenge rampage and gotten myself killed doing it." _Especially doing it without you to protect me_ , he thought, but didn't say it.

Geralt shook his head. "No," he said, as though trying to convince them both. "You'd have been all right, Jaskier. You're stronger than that - stronger than you think."

Later, Jaskier would blame the adrenaline of the fight for the fact that he blinked at Geralt, watched those beloved features blurring behind a veil of tears, and laid his entire soul bare with three words:

"Not without you."

Geralt's breath hitched and he made a small, wounded sound, and suddenly they were kissing, tasting of blood and with Geralt wincing when the kiss put pressure on his split lip but still somehow perfect for all that.

It was the sound of raised voices and footsteps in the hallway approaching that broke them apart. Jaskier grinned helplessly at Geralt, basking in the smile he got back - Geralt! Actually smiling! - for a moment before the real world reasserted itself.

The real world, in which they'd just finished killing a major crime lord and several of his associates, and were not particularly quiet about it.

"That'll be the cavalry, then," Geralt said. "Theirs, specifically."

"Yeah." Jaskier drew back and was already looking around for an alternate escape route, some way to get out other than trying to shoot their way through the entirety of Emhyr's organization. There didn't look to be anything. It was an inner room, no windows, only the one door…

"Jask." Geralt's voice was fond, his hand closing on Jaskier's arm and turning him to face him. He pressed one of the guns into Jaskier's hand as he kissed him. "We can do this. All right?"

"We had better," Jaskier said. "Because there is a capital-c Conversation needing to be had, and we don't have time for it right now. So you better not die before we can have that talk."

Geralt pretended to consider. "A conversation? Hm. On second thought, maybe I should let them finish me off."

Jaskier rolled his eyes. "I know you're allergic to words, but that's an awfully extreme length to go to just to avoid a conversation." He checked the magazine of the pistol he was holding, then stooped to dig through one of the fallen guards' pockets and extract two additional loaded mags.

Standing, he returned to Geralt and pulled him into another kiss. "Besides, it's the kind of conversation that will end in more of this. Shouldn't that be worth surviving for?"

Geralt smiled against Jaskier's lips. "All right, fine."

They parted and went to the door. Geralt laid a hand on the handle and met Jaskier's eyes.

"Ready?"

Jaskier nodded, giving him a tight smile. "Ready."

Geralt smiled back, almost gently. Jaskier wished, for a single, wild second, that he could preserve this moment in amber and stay within it forever.

"Then let's go."

And he opened the door.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so behind on these lol. But I'm almost done with day 4, wrote day 8 a few days ago but am waiting to post it in order, and am determined to keep working on catching up. This challenge shall not defeat me!


End file.
